It’s official: The Wyld Stallyns will return to both the big and small screens on September 1.
In what is likely to become a common occurrence in the worldwide movie market, Orion Pictures has decided to release Bill & Ted Face the Music to on-demand and theater audiences on the same day. The announcement of the film’s simultaneous VOD release and theatrical premieres was accompanied by a new trailer for the film, which has Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter reprise their roles as the hard-rocking slacker saviors of the universe.
Originally scheduled to premiere August 21, Bill & Ted Face the Music brings back Reeves and Winter in their eponymous roles, while also introducing Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as the middle-aged duo’s daughters. The film is directed by Dean Parisot from a script penned by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon.
Bill & Ted Face the Music has the duo coming to terms with a future significantly less epic than they expected, and the weight of their destiny — to save the universe with a song — hanging heavy over their mundane lives. After the pair is given a deadline to compose the most important song ever created, they hatch a plan to steal the song from their future selves, which naturally leads to some hilarious paradoxical adventures through their own timeline.
A project more than 25 years in the making, Bill & Ted Face the Music has had its release date shuffled multiple times as the spread of the coronavirus pandemic put theaters’ status in limbo around the world. Now that some theaters have begun to open both internationally and domestically, studios have begun to reconsider their release calendars, but the overwhelming uncertainty — and the virus’ continued surge in the U.S. — has prompted some distributors to warm to the on-demand market.
In advance of its on-demand and theatrical premiere, Bill & Ted Face the Music will be the focus of a virtual panel during the five-day Comic-Con@Home event. Filmmaker Kevin Smith will moderate a live discussion of the film with Reeves, Winter, Weaving, Lundy-Paine, and William Sadler, who reprises his role from Bill &Ted’s Bogus Journey. Parisot, Matheson, and Solomon will also participate in the virtual event, which will kick off at 3 p.m. PT on Saturday, July 25, and can be streamed at Comic-Con@Home’s YouTube channel.